“So why are you hesitating to do something about your situation?” I asked Ameer. “Or is it that you already took care of it? If you already took care of it, you don’t have to speak on it. But if you let somebody do all that shit to you, they’ll feel crazy confident and come back and finish you off if you don’t get ’em back first,” I warned him.
“Does the cat that did that to you live on your block or is he on your team? Is he somebody you gonna come across again and again?” Chris asked Ameer.
“It’s somebody who I have to see, no doubt,” Ameer confirmed, being vague.
“Oh, shit,” Chris muttered.
“Who is it?” I asked, pushing for the details.
“It was my pops,” Ameer said, and then smiled, his busted lips split and discolored.
“No way, I don’t believe that. What happened?” Chris asked.
“Word up!” Ameer said. “I came back from school today and Pops was waiting for me outside right at the bench. Soon as he saw me, he threw the gloves at me and said, ‘Let’s go.’ ” Ameer looked as though he was reliving it. “I wasn’t scared and shit. You know a young nigga be wanting to kick his father’s ass from time to time. We just never get a real opportunity, but we wish we could, right?”
Chris looked puzzled. Then he broke out and laughed a short, nervous laugh. “True, I wish I could take a swipe at my father some time, but I know it’s impossible,” Chris said sincerely.
“Nothing’s impossible,” Ameer assured him.
“So what happened?” I asked, pushing further.
“So we went down to the basement in my projects and shit and I was thinking like, I didn’t want to use the gloves. I’m not no fucking boxer. I wanted to use our bare hands. But my pops said, ‘Keep the gloves on, raise your fists up. You not gonna use the karate I paid for, on me!’ Ameer imitated his father’s cool old hustler’s voice. We all laughed some.
“So we start boxing. That’s my pop’s thing, so he’s getting the better of me. Then he started feeling himself and pulled his gloves off and just laid into me. Next thing I know, he started punching me in the face, raw hands and all. I tried to block his jabs and swings, you know, and restrain him and control him, but it was like the old nigga was having flashbacks or something of some dude who had done him dirty in the past! I mean I’m his son, right, but he is really trying to crush me. I got some good shots off on him too, but I wasn’t trying to lay him out. I wasn’t trying to finish him off. I know I could’ve if I threw my heart into it. I wanted to punch him in the face a few times but not injure him or kill him. I mean we both gotta live in the same house together, right?”
Ameer might as well been performing in a play. That’s how he told a story. He made anybody wish they was there. He used all of his talking skills, gestures, and energy to make you feel like you was there. Chris was amazed and entertained. I, on the other hand, didn’t deal with it like that.
I could not imagine actually fighting my father. I definitely couldn’t imagine trying with any real intent to punch my father in the face, scar him, whip him, or even to win. I mean my father taught me various fight moves when I was real young, but the way Ameer’s face looked, this was no joke. It was real difficult to get my mind around the idea that his father tried to do him something extra dirty-dirty.
“So what happened?” I pushed Ameer to finish telling his story.
“Afterward we both went upstairs like it wasn’t nothing. When my mother got home, she went off! My father told her, ‘Stop with the drama already. You know boys fight. Your son had a fight in school and obviously he lost this one time. It happens.’ ”
“What did your mother say after that?” Chris asked.
“She asked me if I had a fight at school. I told her, ‘Yeah, but don’t worry about it. You should see the other guy!’ ” Chris and Ameer laughed again.
After some seconds I asked, “But what was his reason? Why did your father want to attack you like that?”
“Oh, ’cause I fucked his little girlfriend,” Ameer said casually.
“The girl I saw at your apartment yesterday?”
“Not the girl Dana, who was on the bench with me when you rolled up.”
“I know, the one that was sitting on your bed.”
“Yeah, her,” Ameer confirmed.
“I thought you said she was one of your girls,” I reminded him.
“Nah, she was really looking for my father and I knew it and my pops knew it too. I just didn’t want my mother to get arrested over her. You know my mother’s smart. She wasn’t just gonna believe right off the top that the girl was there looking for me and not my pops. She already didn’t trust the girl from something before. That’s why my moms told me to take the girl to my room. That way if the girl was there looking for my pops, my pops would reveal himself by the way he acted.”
“Did he reveal himself in front of your moms?” Chris asked.
“Nah, you saw how cool he was when he came back home, right?” Ameer directed his question at me, since I was there with him yesterday.
“Yeah, right” was all I said.
“Well, the girl was in my room and she was tight at my father, so she was coming on to me. So I fucked her. My headboard was banging against the wall of my parents’ bedroom and the whole nine. The whole time I’m fucking her, I’m covering for my father and hoping that it’s convincing my mother that she was really my girl, and it did. The next morning Moms was all cooled out. I bumped into my pops in the bathroom and he didn’t say nothing rude or nothing. Later when I got home though, he was just laying and waiting for me with the gloves.”
“What about the girl?” Chris followed up.
“Oh, I fucked her good. At first she was just angry with my pops and fucking with fury, like a revenge fuck, yah know what I mean? Then I could feel her body loosen up and giving in. She slowed down and started moving her hips like music. We grinded some more and soon she was moaning. When she wanted some tongue, I knew I had her all the way open. When we was through, she started looking at me like she was all turned out and in love. I told her not to bring her ass up to our apartment no more. If she wanted me to keep fucking her, or even if she wanted my father, she needed to stay her ass downstairs and wait till one of us come check her.”
“Did she go for it? What did she say?” Chris asked.
“What the fuck is she gonna say? She said okay!” Chris and Ameer laughed again.
I wanted to laugh also but I couldn’t. I was still trying to figure out why Ameer’s father had to hide his relationship with the female. From time to time, like many Americans I’ve met and known, Ameer and his father claimed to be Muslims, to have some knowledge of Islam, or to be some kind of Five Percenters. A Muslim man is allowed to have more than one woman. In fact, a Muslim man, according to the Holy Quran, can have up to four wives. So what was the dilemma? If I chose to take a next wife, I would be up-front with it. I would introduce her to Akemi. I would teach her to love and respect Akemi as first wife. Akemi would accept her also. Both of them would understand that they are my responsibility, women I would protect with my life and provide for. Each of them would be for my pleasure and comfort. Each of them would become mothers of my children. I would be their husband and father to all my seeds. I would treat them all well and fairly.
“Why didn’t your father just take the other girl as his second wife?” I asked Ameer.
“This ain’t Baghdad, motherfucker!” he snapped at me. “My moms ain’t having that shit. Besides, me and my pops are Muslim, but my moms ain’t Muslim no more.”
“My moms wouldn’t go for that shit either,” Chris said. “She be watching all them ladies in the church like a hawk. She ain’t playing, word to mother!” They both laughed for a good long while.
I let it go. I could see that somehow, both of them thought that it was better the way that they were living. Ameer thought it was okay to fuck his father’s woman to cover for his father fucking her in the first place. His father thou
ght it was okay to fuck a woman without marriage or any degree of honesty. His father let another woman upset his household. For me a wife is your “peace,” and no one should be allowed to disturb a man’s peace.
And what about my friend Chris? What if his father chose a second or third woman from the congregation? Would it be okay for his father to go up in them without marriage or acknowledgment? Would it be cool and acceptable to the church people as long as no one discussed or exposed it? And what would happen when Reverend Broadman created life in a second or third womb? Would he abandon his children, like a fool and a coward? Would he deny that the relations he had with the women ever existed, the way Ameer’s father pretended and denied the female?
I thought about Sudana, a really good and pretty and well-raised daughter, whose attraction to me I could feel so strongly. Yet I already knew that I would not go into her just for my own pleasure and without seeking her family’s counsel, without thinking or planning and being ready and capable and being up-front with everyone I loved. I knew I wouldn’t go into her without marriage, and this is why I worked hard to guard myself from being led solely by my own deep desires.
“Brother, what are you thinking about and where did your mind go?” Chris questioned.
“He’s thinking about Japan. You know he’s leaving in two days,” Ameer said.
“Japan, word?” Chris looked amazed and astounded into silence.
“Listen, don’t mention my trip to anyone else. Solid?” I asked them.
“Why?” Chris asked.
“Because he’s a ninja!” Ameer joked. Chris laughed.
“Seriously, don’t, aight?” I reinforced. “Not even to Sensei. If I want anyone to know anything about me, let me be the one doing the telling,” I said.
“What could we tell anyway? You been to my apartment plenty of times. You and I both been to Chris’s house, but neither of us two ever been to your house,” Ameer said with a serious tone, as though he had been cheated by me for all these years.
“You want to come by my apartment?” I fired back. “C’mon.”
It was nothing for me to shoot by my block to meet Ameer’s challenge and resolve their curiosity and maintain our friendship. I would take them and we would get a game going on my court. I needed to work my left shoulder and arm anyway. True, I had never invited them or anyone else over to my place. This was the place where my Umma and sister were kept. Why should I allow anyone to enter? But now we were moving out. Ameer and Chris did not know this, but I planned to pack up my apartment as soon as I returned from Japan, and to never have my mother or sister or wife back on my Brooklyn block. We would all leave from Mr. Ghazzali’s home to go to our new house as soon as it was available and prepared, inshallah.
* * *
Chris and Ameer were content with the fact that I invited them over. For the sake of time, we played ball at one of our usual courts down from the dojo. Chris was afraid to aggravate his father and cause him to double up his punishment. “Man, I can’t be the Reverend’s prisoner for two seasons. I’m trying to do what my father demands for the springtime and then be free to roam the streets for the whole summer!”
Later Chris left, saying to me, “Take it easy, man. Thanks for finally inviting me to your place, and take the movie camera with you to Japan. I’ll be the first standing in line to check your movie!”
Me and Ameer remained on the court. I practiced my dribble using mostly my right arm only. I worked on one-handed layups and jumpers.
“Let’s put some money on tomorrow night’s game,” Ameer suggested.
“Why?” I asked.
“ ’Cause we both in fucked-up condition, so let’s see who the best man is between us. Which one of us can persevere through our injuries and come out on top.” He smiled, he was always so hyped up to make a bet.
“What if we both win and come out on top in our games? We both playing different teams anyhow.” I wanted to show Ameer a different angle instead of moving it like he and I should be rivals when we are best of friends. “Besides, your injuries are on your face. That’s not gonna interrupt your mean-ass jumper.”
“Don’t sleep. I use this face to get a lot of shit accomplished. It’ll be hard to talk shit on the court when I look like I got Brooklyn mobbed. That’s why I didn’t want to go around your block tonight. Them cats around your way, seeing me for the first time and shit, would be looking at me like I’m a easy vic.”
“True,” I admitted. “But I would have held you down.”
“I wouldn’t’ve even came out my apartment tonight if it wasn’t to go to the dojo. I knew you and Chris would show up, so I showed up,” Ameer said.
“Yeah? Or is it more like you hiding from your pops?” We both laughed.
“You kind of good at catching shit. I’m definitely try’na stay out his face for a few days. Tonight I’ma crash at this female’s house I know. Her mother works the night shift. She told me, ‘Ameer I hate sleeping alone.’ ” He imitated the high-pitch voice of a stupid female. Then he laughed and even hollered. “I told her that tonight I’m gonna help you out.”
“You could stay by me tomorrow night. Come by after your game, about 11:30 p.m.” I offered.
“Good looking out,” he accepted.
“Small bet, a hundred.” Ameer was back focused on a wager.
“Do you even have a hundred dollars?” I fucked with him.
“You a foul nigga,” he said.
“Aight, a hundred. If I win, give this hundred dollars to Sensei at your next class. Tell him I said please hold my spot till I get back. Just pay him and remember not to tell him nothing else.” I handed Ameer the same envelope I tried to pay out to Sensei earlier. Ameer took the envelope, flipped it open, and checked inside. He saw the money.
“Slow down, you acting like you already won,” Ameer complained.
“I don’t plan on losing, not ever, you know that.”
“Every man is losing something sometimes,” Ameer philosophized.
“I know. I just said I never plan on losing. A man who plans on losing loses every time.”
* * *
In the remaining hour I had open before going to pick Umma up from the late shift, I decided to give Bangs a call just to check on her situation. I had never phoned her before, but her number was embossed in my mind because when I first met her, she would say it, sing it, rhyme it to me repeatedly, hoping I’d give her a call.
Purposely, I jumped on the train and exited at a random stop that I never use. I selected a random telephone booth. When I pressed the first number, I saw one dude here and one dude there watching the booth as though it was their private house phone and they were all expecting a call. I pressed the other six digits, disregarding them.
“Hang up the phone!” I heard a male voice yell over the line before whoever picked up could even say hello.
“It might be Grandma calling from the hospital,” I heard Bangs’s voice say as though she was holding the receiver down against her side instead of right to her ear.
“That’s why you got that speed knot on your head, ’cause you always talking slick,” the male voice said.
“Hello, Grandma!” I heard Bangs’s excited voice say, as though now she had the phone to her ear. Then the phone dropped and I could hear hands dragging it back and forth and then click. I knew who the male voice belonged to. I had heard it before and it wasn’t one of the young fools from around her way.
Chapter 21
THE MEANING
“Look at the moon,” Umma said to me. We were riding in the back seat of the taxicab together, both of our windows lowered halfway. Umma was turning her face toward the window to feel the night breeze. “It’s hard to believe that this moon I see is the same as my Sudan moon,” Umma remarked softly. “How could it be so powerful and brilliant back home and so dark and dim here?”
We were in a notorious New York traffic jam on the FDR, cars crawling from Brooklyn to Dyckman, the borderline between Manhattan and the Bro
nx. I thought I would rush hardworking Umma home in a taxi, but now we were in for an expensive, slow, long ride after the midnight hour.
“You know, son, your ticket to Japan is Saturday, May tenth, and our holy month of Ramadan will begin that same evening. I’ve been thinking about the meaning of that,” she said.
I listened to my Umma, her words overpowering my thoughts which were jam-packed and colliding like bumper cars in my mind. How could I forget Ramadan? I asked myself. But it was not that I had forgotten it. Every Muslim knows that this is the most important time of our year. Ramadan comes annually according to the moon, so the date of the arrival of Ramadan each year is different, unlike Christmas, which for Christians and non-Christians is always December 25. Ramadan is the month in which Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, received the revelation of the Holy Quran, our book of guidance from Allah. Our Quran gives us guidance for life and sets limits and boundaries for what all believers should, should not, and must do.
“You know, son, when I pray, I ask Allah to make you capable and strong in the face of life’s test. Your physical is solid,” Umma said, turning inward and placing her palm on my chest. “But it is your faith that will pull you through every time.”
“Agreed” is all I answered.
“Since you are traveling, you can be excused from the fasting and make up the days when you return,” Umma said softly, her eyes widening to search my soul.
Every Muslim is required to fast the entire month of Ramadan. Our fast is from food and water. We take our last sip of water before sunrise right before we see that thin thread of light that separates the night from day. Then we don’t eat or drink or make love to our wives, until we see the daylight devoured by the night at sunset. For thirty days in a row we do this, using our time to thank Allah and to read the Quran, hoping to be forgiven for our past sins. The only Muslims excused from this fast are the ill and the traveling. Even those who are excused because of illness or travel are required to do serious acts of kindness and charity throughout the observance.
Midnight and the Meaning of Love Page 13